


Spectacles

by wargoddess



Series: Prompts [12]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, Growing Old Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 01:04:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14739177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: Cullen gets glasses. Turns out Carver's got a thing for glasses.





	Spectacles

**Author's Note:**

> For an anon prompt: "Cullen and Carver, glasses and growing older." Set during the "many years later" epilogue of "Andraste" in the Templar Canticles series.

Growing older was a thing that no Templar expected to do, Cullen reflected as he sighed and stared at the things the healer had placed in his palm.  It was why so many accepted the burden, and the lyrium – because the Templars recruited young men, and young men thought they would live forever… and because none of them expected to make it to their middle years, let alone elderhood.  “I had hoped to die in battle defending the Maker and Thedas,” he said, his voice heavy with incipient grief.

“Oh, for the Maker’s sake,” snapped First Enchanter Apphia, who stood nearby.  The healer had covered his mouth, though over his hand his eyes crinkled with held laughter.  “Knight Commander, they’re just _spectacles_.  You’ll get used to them.  Next!”

* * *

He was no more resigned to his fate by the time Carver’s duty shift ended, though Cullen had chosen to distract himself from the whole miserable matter with work, and there was always more than enough of that.  Carver knew better than to disturb him when he was at his desk, so Cullen murmured a greeting and then kept at a particularly knotty contract that the Gallows had received from the Dwarven Merchants’ Guild.  There was something tricksy about the tariff fee, he just knew it, and if he didn’t spot it before his next meeting with Bran and Bran saw it first, Cullen would never hear the end of it.

The hated spectacles sat on his nose.  They _had_ made it easier to see, he was forced to concede with great reluctance.  He’d gone to the healers’ open-clinic hours because of headaches and Carver’s badgering, but he’d done so reluctantly, fearing something worse:  brain fever, a tumor, the plague.  It was in fact simple eye strain, to be repaired with glasses and more candles when he worked at night.  Therefore Cullen quite expected to hear an “I told you so” or two from Carver, when his husband flopped onto the couch to wait for him.

But Carver was silent.  Cullen worked on out of habit, but as he did so he became increasingly aware of the weight of Carver’s gaze.  Touching the nib of his quill to his tongue to mark the tricksy spot, he turned to peer at Carver over the rim of the spectacles and found that Carver had curled up with one arm under his head and his gaze fixed on Cullen’s face.  He’d brought a book to read while Cullen worked, as per his usual practice, but the book was shut and ignored in front of him.  Cullen blinked in surprise.  Carver did not; he had not blinked since Cullen noticed.

“Are they so terrible, my knight?” he asked finally, touching the spectacles and feeling self-conscious.  Carver was only a few years younger than himself, with handsome threads of white at his own temples, though he was still possessed of a younger man’s vitality. “Do… do they make me look infirm?”

“What?”  Carver blinked at last.  “Oh.  No.  You done working?”  He slid off the couch.

The bloody contract was going to give him a headache despite the spectacles.  Cullen put the quill down, giving in to his misery.  “I am.  I cannot think past the tip of my nose – mostly because I _notice_ the tip of my nose now, where most of my life I did not.”  Carver slid hands over Cullen’s shoulders, administering a gentle massage as was his habit, and Cullen relaxed against him with a heavy sigh.  “The apprentices will think me ancient when next they see me.”

“The apprentices think Knight Corporal Emeris is ancient, and she’s not even thirty,” Carver snapped, which was true enough.  But then Carver moved around Cullen, pulling his desk chair back so that he could crouch at Cullen’s feet.  His hands rested on Cullen’s thighs, casually – but Cullen knew his love.  And sure enough, Carver’s hands had begun inching up toward Cullen’s trouser-laces.  “You tired, old man?”

And Cullen could only laugh in bemusement.  Carver had grown more moderate in his lusts now that he was no longer a young man, but there was no mistaking the _particular_ gleam in his gaze now, or the way he eyed Cullen through his long, lovely lashes.  “Truly?” Cullen asked – though he sat up so that Carver could work on the laces, which Carver immediately began to do.  “ _Spectacles_ , Carver?”

“I like ‘em,” Carver said, with a shrug.  He’d gotten Cullen’s trousers open, and Cullen had obliged by lifting up enough to let Carver ease them down his hips a bit.  Now Carver had hold of Cullen’s sleepy cock – because sport had been the last thing on his mind, but he was certainly waking up in response to that look on Carver’s face.  “Make you look prissy.”

“Oh,” Cullen said, drawing back a little in uncertainty.  Prissy wasn’t good, was it?  But then he shuddered and inhaled a little, because Carver had gone at him with a will by this point, and there were few things in life that Cullen loved more than Carver’s mouth when he was feeling inspired.

So Cullen let him have his head (and he coughed to himself at the pun, and privately vowed never to say such a thing in Carver’s hearing), and before long he’d forgotten all about the bloody spectacles.  When Carver slurped free of Cullen’s now-wide-awake cock – though he nurtured it with a gentle hand – he searched Cullen’s face and grinned at what he saw.  “Bed?”

“B-bed,” Cullen agreed, his voice shaky.  So he stood with Carver, who pulled him close and nuzzled at his mouth, all the while keeping his hand lively.

“Will you let me have you?” he asked in Cullen’s ear.  “You always come harder while I’m in you, working you good and slow both ways.”

That was true enough, though Cullen would never be surprised that his husband could still make him blush after everything they’d done together.  “Absolutely,” he said – and then remembered the damned spectacles.  “Oh –”  He reached up to take them off and leave them on the desk.

“Keep ‘em on,” Carver breathed.  He kissed Cullen’s neck just below the ear; Cullen shuddered in pleasure.

“Th-they are _expensive_ , Carver.  The budget – ”

“We’ll be careful. But I want to muss you with them on.”  By now he had started easing Cullen away from the desk, toward the bedroom.  “Love your prissy face.  You always look smart, but now it’s even better.  All _distinguished_.  Can’t wait to make you come apart.”

Now Cullen began to grin in delight, his earlier melancholy entirely forgotten.  Of course _to Carver,_ prissy was good. “Perhaps you should have married a scholar, then?”

Carver snorted and gave Cullen’s cock a practiced roll-and-stroke, which made his whole body shudder and his knees go weak.  “If there’s a scholar who can kick my arse in the sparring ring? Sure.”  Then he pulled back, his face alighting with an idea.  “That bookcase in our room.”

And immediately Cullen intuited what he was about.  Yes, the bookcase, used to store Carver’s tawdry romances and Cullen’s history scrolls, was only about waist-height.  They had not used it before, since their loveplay could be vigorous and the bookcase was an antique, but… He caught himself smiling. “I suppose if you must already be mindful of the spectacles…”

“Just so,” Carver said, grinning back and then chasing this with a kiss.  “I’ll be a perfect proper gentleman, mussing you _carefully_ over parchment and inks, ‘til those spectacles come askew – but not off, so they don’t break.”  He leaned down to lick along the edge of Cullen’s jaw, just past the beard, and Cullen shuddered.  “It’ll be the prissiest fuck ever.”

 _Flames_ , but Cullen loved him.  Cullen’s handsome knight, chasing away all his growing-old megrims, offering debauchery as the perfect cure.  Only Carver could do such a thing and be right of it.  The Maker had indeed given Cullen his perfect match.

“Lead on then, my love,” he said, laughing as Carver took his hand and bowed over it with exaggerated courtliness.  “Let us be prissy old men, together.”

**Author's Note:**

> Cullen's only in his fifties. He's just being ridiculous.


End file.
